Publication Account
Date 1986
Event ID 1017238
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1017238
The essentially alien nature of the motte and bailey castles erected as part of Norman feudalism can be appreciated at Duffus. Out of the now fertile but then swampy Laich rises a green but windswept mound topped by a broken stone castle.
The castle that David I stayed in when inspecting the building work at his new foundation, Kinloss Abbey, in 1151, would have been a timber tower surrounded by a stockade, set on the artificial mound. The deep defensive ditch that separated the motte from the bailey can still be seen.
The stone castle that now crowns the motte may have been the one damaged by the Moray uprising of 1297 during the Wars ofIndependence. It is an unusual stone keep with timber floors of 11m span, supported on piers.
In the event, the weight of the huge tower proved too much for the gravel mound; the collapsed masonry of the north-west corner sprawls, still bonded, on the motte side. The bailey is surrounded by the footings of a curtain wall with a 15th century domestic range of hall and cellars against its north inner face; the latter have been built over the motte ditch into which they have partially collapsed. Around the whole fortification is a boundary ditch, now water-filled, enclosing c 3.2 ha.
Information from ‘Exploring Scotland’s Heritage: Grampian’, (1986).
